A major consumer-facing company was rolling out a strategic investment programme, coinciding with a planned expansion announcement. However these plans were jeopardised when the company was sanctioned by multiple regulators as a result of alleged wrong-doing.
Africa Practice was retained to provide insights into the reasons for the regulatory action and advise on appropriate communications and stakeholder engagement to resolve the issue with minimal damage to the company, whilst maintaining social licence to operate. We provided insights into the origin of the allegations, as well as providing a nuanced understanding of the media’s interpretation of the story, and used that to guide public positioning and specific stakeholder engagement activity. Our approach combined insights from our local knowledge and networks, shared and visualised on our InGauge digital stakeholder engagement platform, to provide our client with a detailed understanding of the key stakeholders’ positions, networks and interactions – across government, regulators, media and civil society. This acted as the basis for an informed, constructive and ultimately successful engagement strategy, which enabled the client to reach an amicable agreement with the regulator.
The client is now exploring a number of related business cases where InGauge can help to reduce commercial risk and improve operational efficiency – we are helping them to roll the system out across departments, enabling a coherent, practical understanding of the company’s stakeholder environment and building capacity for high quality stakeholder engagement.
